Gears TV and Mayfair 11 month review

by sprocketlovewhistle

AS the title says I am on my 11th month of Gears TV, and find that it is the most stable service I have ever used. The channels play with 0 buffering or drop outs on a 25mb connection. The service supports apks and provides a Kodi repository. Setup instructions can be found on their website. The support time is OK, as far as I can tell, In 11 months I have contacted then 4 times, not for problems with the service, just for information. I am currently subscribed to Mayfair guide, and it is a very accurate EPG. I have never encountered an error in their listings. That being said, the Gears TV addon for Kodi shows 600 channels, Mayfair lists 244. I have no idea why this is the case, still it is the best working TV Guide I have used. I try other services occasionally, looking for value and more customizable packages. Many of my 600 channels have no programming I am interested in. The only sports programming I watch is NFL and snooker, so many of the channels I cannot report on. Have a good day. I'm gonna watch some TV.

davo_nz

The channels play with 0 buffering

wow, 11 months of IPTV and not one buffer, that must be a world record. Piss off shill.

Danieliuschroeder

I don't believe you about the no buffering part.

PMX_DchromE

I can tell you that Gears does indeed buffer a lot(try watching GoT on a sunday on HBO, not happening) and their picture quality is crap compared to other services out there. This is coming from someone who's had Gears for years when they were at disagreements with Dexter. I let my sub expire and switched to a different provider and it's a night and day difference. Gears doesn't even have 60fps sports channels and all their channels look washed out. They mess with the bitrate too much. It's severely overpriced. The mayfair guide is the only thing that's decent worth having from that service.

firestickmike

I had GearsTv plus Mayfair for over a year and I let it expire in March. The service was great but definitely not perfect like OP states. I will admit that, even with the new interface and what not the service was one of the better ones that Ive tried. But I decided to let it expire and not renew it because of two reasons.

  1. The service was buffering more and more over time, not to the point that it was unwatchable but it was noticably more buffering than 6 months and 12 months prior.

  2. The payment system pissed me off. There was a late fee of $2 or $3 and I couldn't setup an auto bill to my credit card. When I asked if I could just pay 3months up front I was basically told to go fuck myself.

NetNuttt

I also have Gears and so far it is the best for my family. I have tried 3 other IPTV's and have Streams4US as a backup. We use a lot of catchup and Gears is the best so far for using catchup. I do have some buffering issues but most of the time it comes down to my VPN connection.

jamarchist

I've had Gears for roughly a year. I primarily use it with the free Mayfair guide on Kodi running on an RPi. I actually have a second subscription for a bar I own running the $19 version on a fire stick. My experience has been as follows:

  • Yesterday (opening Sunday for the NFL) the entire service went down for a while. I don't even know how long (I'm sure at least 30 minutes) because I had to resort to watching football with a stream found on [another Reddit sub]
  • It buffers a lot for 'peak' events (BCS Championship game was almost unwatchable this year)
  • The quality isn't great. Definitely not 60fps. Fast moving objects (like footballs) demonstrate this pretty clearly as you can see them 'trace' across the screen
  • The Mayfair guide doesn't contain anywhere near the full channel lineup, and many of them are actually unreachable from the guide. You can hack the database to fix some of that, but ew
  • There are occasional screen saver issues and things like that from the feed sources

There are a lot of other minor annoyances. For general tv watching, though, I actually like Gears. It's relatively stable, quality is generally pretty good, support is responsive usually, the channel lineup is fairly comprehensive for the USA, and the guides work pretty nicely.

I'm probably going to subscribe to one of the services (and a second one for backup) recommended by u/aybesea in his ultimate sports viewing post and drop Gears for home viewing. Gears is good as a plain old cable provider replacement, and okay for casual sports viewing, but falls short for a hardcore sports fan. Still, it has taken me a year to come to this conclusion, so it ain't that bad.

blazesonthai

Does this have any Chinese channels?

Takenover83

I tried Gears for a month. Not bad. But I really prefer using a app of my choice via m3u/epg. Their app is very nice however, but one thing that bugged me was that I could not channel surf. No way to just flip from one channel to the next. The price for service is the highest I have seen. ~$19 a month.

fuga_ega

Any resellers for Gears? I'd like to try it

Sabresfan85

If you have severe buffering with Gears ? then it's most defiantly an issue with your internet. I've maybe buffered once or twice in the last year or so. But I'm also working with 100mbs with Spectrum. And as far as the picture quality goes, it's crystal clear for me.

Jfortay

Is this gears tv or reloaded or is it the same thing I need a link

iNickster

Do they offer services for the MAG boxes?

Yespappa19

Most definitely lies Gears is the biggest rip off going and picture quality is back in the 1980s

Site_Director

I love reloaded. Just the same as gears with 24 hour catch up. I only wish they offered 2 account packages when I'm away from home.